


The Art of Building a Nest III

by bluetoast



Series: Birds of a Feather [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Child Abuse, Deaf Character, Deaf Dean Winchester, F/M, Gen, John Winchester's Bad Parenting, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetoast/pseuds/bluetoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael has to leave town for work, leaving Dean and Elisa to repaint his room. They've both had a lot on their minds lately with how life is going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Building a Nest III

The room looked different with the furniture shoved to the middle of the room and covered with plastic. The large rug was rolled up and in the hallway, along with the picture that hung on the wall and drop cloths were on the hardwood floor. Dean didn't know why painting his room seemed so – what it felt was permanent. Sure, it could be painted over again, but the fact that he'd chosen the color, that he was part of the process, it somehow made him feel more grounded in the event. He looked down at the paint cans at his feet, waiting for Elisa to come back from downstairs.

The light that indicated they had a phone call had flashed a few times and she'd gone to answer it. Dean turned towards the doorway, sensing movement and saw Elisa, who looked rather worried.

 _“What's wrong?”_ Dean took a step towards her and put a hand on her arm.

 _“That was Michael. He won't be home tonight, work needs him to go to Sioux City.”_ She seemed to gather herself and then took a deep breath. _“He told me to tell you to make sure you eat your vegetables.”_

Dean snorted in reply. _“When was the last time I refused to eat a vegetable?”_

His remark seemed to break her mood and her mouth opened in a laugh neither of them could hear. _“You might just be the only child in the state who doesn't.”_

 _“The state? Try the entire east coast!”_ Dean grinned and then Elisa went over to the paint cans, crouching down to open one and filled one of the pans with the eggshell colored liquid. For his part, Dean took one of the two rollers and went over to the bookshelf wall. He then went back for his pan of paint. 

_“Careful with it.”_ Elisa remarked as he took it from her. 

Dean nodded and went back to his roller and, after filling it with paint, started to work. He wasn't sorry to see the flowers get covered up. Most of the wallpaper had been stripped off, but here and there, patches remained. The sharp smell of the paint reminded him of Sammy, for some reason. The weekend that Mommy and John painted the room down the hall from his yellow. He couldn't recall much about that weekend, only the sharp scent of the paint and staying in his room with his blocks. He hardly called John Dad anymore. He was just – John. 

His nights weren't filled with horrific nightmares anymore. Several weeks ago, when he'd gotten Elisa's angels out from the closet and set them up on the dresser – he'd not had a bad dream. He hadn't even gotten into trouble for getting into the boxes of angels, although he'd expected he would. The angels were waiting for a new home elsewhere in the house, except one. The angel with the trumpet was now a permanent resident of Dean's room. 

His name was Gabriel, according to Elisa.

When the room was finished, Dean would put Gabriel back on the dresser to stand guard over the room - and he didn't care how silly that thought might be. Mommy told him that angels watched over him, Elisa told him the same thing and he knew that neither of them were liars. 

Dean had to use a step-stool to reach the wall up near the ceiling and he held his arm out for balance as the roller went all the way up to the top of his reach and then he drew it back down. This was going to be his room now. He was going to stay here, grow up – do gymnastics, go to school – all that stuff he used to think wouldn't happen. He refilled his roller-brush, frowning slightly. Maybe Sammy could have a room of his own somewhere too. Maybe John found the thing that killed Mommy and then...

Knowing John, he might very well have left Sammy with Uncle Bobby or Pastor Jim. They both loved Sammy. Without Sammy to worry about, John could hunt and hunt and not worry about a thing. It was just the sort of thing John would do. Sammy could have that room at Uncle Bobby's with the window that looked south, toward that open field. He liked that room.

Perfect hearing Sammy. 

Dean shook his head to clear it and went back to painting the wall. 

Elisa glanced to her left to check on Dean's progress. He was, just as she suspected, being very thorough and making sure he completely covered everything before moving on. She smiled and returned to her own wall, her mind half on the task. She and Michael had gotten all the paperwork to formally adopt Dean into their family and sent it off the day his stay with them hit the sixth month mark. With a lot of luck and prayers, Dean would legally belong to them before the start of the school year. In her heart, Dean was already her baby. She'd fallen in love with his picture the moment she saw it. 

It was almost shocking how far the boy had come in those six months. While he was still uncertain about things – it'd taken her and Michael six weeks alone to convince him that, yes, it was okay if he had a second helping of dinner – other things were just flourishing. He was doing well in school, in gymnastics and Michael told her he was doing quite well in speech therapy. She'd never been able to manage that herself. She just wished there was a way to take all that pain of his away – at least he'd not been having nightmares any more. Or if he was, he wasn't sharing the fact that he was.

She refilled her brush and got back to work. They'd gotten started late on this project, with Dean having summer school this morning and she'd started working on putting her classroom together for the fall, they'd meant to start this hours ago, but there had been a crowd at the hardware store and the man at the paint counter had been a bit of an asshole. Honestly, you'd think hearing people would be _thankful_ when you wrote down what you needed instead of expecting them to know ASL. 

*  
They spent a rare dinner in front of television, watching the news filter in from Sioux City. Dean kept glancing over at Elisa, who kept shaking her head at the report. He had to wonder how many times had she sat and watched reports like this, knowing Michael was out at the crash site, looking for evidence. This crash was pretty bad, from what he could tell. The only part of the plane that had been shown was the front of it – but the text assured that many passengers escaped with only minor injuries. Dean couldn't think of just what exactly was a _minor_ injury in a plane crash where the only thing the cameras were showing was the cockpit. 

When they were finished eating, Dean took both of their plates into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher, before returning to sit at the dining room table to finish up his homework. They wouldn't be using this table much longer. A half-refurbished table was waiting for him and Michael to finish working with it. It was their summer project, and four of the six chairs for it were crowded around the current table, the others waited against the wall. Once the table was done, he and Michael would stain the chairs to match the wood. 

Dean wasn't sure how long he sat there, diagramming sentences, only that he must have pretty deep in study because he nearly jumped when a bowl of ice cream appeared next to him on the table and he looked up. 

_“You've been working on that for the past hour, I'd say you need a study break.”_ Elisa sat down at the table.

 _“Thank you.”_ He replied, and picked up his spoon. 

**

His room was now completely finished and put back together. Dean looked around at the work he and Elisa had spent the past four days completing. This really was his room now – more than it had been at the beginning of this week. This was going to be his home. Even if John tried to look for him – he'd never look for him here. John would probably look in foster homes – or morgues. Maybe, just maybe, some part of John, the part of John that had existed when they lived in Lawrence had gotten through to him and explained that the best thing for Dean – was to leave Dean with people who could – and _would_ care for him.

Dean came into the room from brushing his teeth and adjusted the angel on his dresser, studying it for a moment. Mommy probably talked with angels in Heaven – maybe she'd asked one of them for help for him. Would she really care if he – would she be hurt if he – The revelation came to him all at once and he turned and headed downstairs. He paused at the foot of them, his heart fluttering. 

Elisa came into the kitchen after hanging up from her conversation with Michael, silently wishing for what felt like the millionth time that science would build a better phone for the deaf so they wouldn't have to rely on reading text. A video-phone or something... She stopped short when she saw Dean at the foot of the stairs. She thought he'd already gone to bed. _“Is something wrong, Dean?”_

The boy shook his head, but she could see tears in his eyes. Clearly, something was upsetting him. _“I just came downstairs to say goodnight, mom – and ask you if dad told you when he was coming home.”_

She covered her mouth with her hand, scarcely believing what she'd just seen. Her shock only lasted for what must have been half a minute. A moment later, she found herself embracing her son, both of them crying.


End file.
